Hero Worship
by Mia-Zeklos
Summary: James Bond isn't Ianto's only role model. He is, however, the least embarrassing one.


**Author's Notes: This fic is just plain weird, I know. It came out of nowhere, really, and it was supposed to be much shorter and not as deep when it comes to characterisation, but anyway. I hope you like it, and I'd love to know what you think.**

Just once, Ianto thought as something that resembled a harpy in the cage next to his screeched loudly, _just once_, it would have been nice to _not_ be the one in the middle of the mess that conveniently decided to happen while he was at work. Just once it would have been lovely to _not_ get a 'don't talk to the aliens' speech from Miss For-the-queen-and-fucking-country.

But of course, it was not to be.

He sat up in the dirty, unkempt cage where he'd been thrown – thousands of light years away from home, as it seemed – and blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. It wasn't an easy task, given that everything and everyone around him insisted on being so noisy and on moving too much and too fast. Colours danced in waves in and out of his vision and he followed them, mesmerised, until he realised that he was probably the only one who could see them. He wasn't sure what it had been that he'd injected himself with back in his office, but Sidney from Management had told him that it was alien and that it had made her 'feel like she was flying', so he'd decided it was worth a try.

Right now, he hated every questionable decision he'd taken in his life.

The– whatever it was, frankly, that had captured him had put him in a small cage, just big enough for him to be able to sit down in it, in the company of all sorts of beasts and creatures from all around the universe. They all seemed frightened and alarmed and kept shouting and trashing about, but Ianto knew he was above that. Well, okay, yes, he'd tried negotiating at first – and had got gradually more aggressive while doing it – but he'd given up now.

His captor appeared back into his field of vision and Ianto – along with everything else in his line of cells – plastered himself against the metal bars to see better, and forgot to breathe.

There was a man with the one who'd kidnapped him; human-looking, tall and thin, in a brown suit. He seemed to be somewhere between troubled and angry as he took in all the creatures, leaning in to caress some of them and not being too shocked when one or two tried to bite his fingers off. Quite on the contrary, actually, he looked _enchanted _by them. And still, that wasn't the most remarkable thing about him.

Ianto recognised him instantly.

He'd seen him mostly in portraits made during Queen Victoria's time, but that didn't make it any less clear. Torchwood's number one enemy was walking amongst the cells on this faraway planet, not looking at all as menacing or as inclined to take over the world as Yvonne had described him on Ianto's first day.

"There's also this one," his captor was saying. Ianto found it rather curious that he could understand him – was the alien really speaking English? – but decided to focus on more urgent matters. "But I wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't stop talking and constantly asks to speak to the local authorities."

"Show me," the Doctor said, his voice deep and grim with disapproval. Ianto briefly wondered if this was where the locals bought slaves and whether the Doctor had intentions of buying one or freeing them all, but his train of thought was cut off when he found himself face to face with the man. "I recognise the species," he said, tone even darker than before. "How much?"

The alien waved him off. "Oh, take it for free. It's too complex to do anyone's house work and it's too quiet to sell it for a circus. You can keep it."

"_Him_, thank you very much," Ianto muttered as his cage was unlocked and the alien looked sideways at the Doctor as if saying, _What did I tell you?_

"Come here, you," the Doctor murmured as he helped Ianto out of the cage and then brought him up to his feet. "How did you end up here?"

"I was, ah, taken from my workplace." If it had been any other alien, Ianto might have shamelessly put a leash on it and brought it to Yvonne to get back into her good books after the current fiasco, but this was _the Doctor_. Torchwood would lock him up and examine him, and he'd just saved his life.

He couldn't.

"What kind of work do you do?" The Doctor didn't leave him enough time to answer. "When and where are you from?"

"Torchwood One, Earth, 2004," Ianto recited quickly. This was easy enough, even as he gathered his wits and started looking around the alien world around him in awe.

The Doctor's expression shifted immediately. "2004?" He repeated and Ianto nodded. There was something like regret and pity in his tone and Ianto squinted against him.

"What is it?"

"Nothing, just–" He shook his head. "Nothing."

"Can you get me home? Given that I can understand what everyone here's saying, I suppose your TARDIS has to be somewhere around." The Doctor threw him a surprised look and Ianto shrugged. "Torchwood is an institution created to research and understand–"

"I know," the Doctor interrupted, clearly irritated. "What's your name?"

"Ianto Jones." Ianto couldn't help but stare at the man's face for reaction. He'd apparently visited Torchwood at some point in the future – there would be no other reason for him to act like he did when he heard the date. The Doctor's face lit up almost immediately and he prodded, "Does it ring a bell?" No response, just a small, knowing smile. "Something horrible happens to us all in the future, doesn't it?" He asked darkly.

"I'm afraid so."

"I survive, though." No reaction. "You wouldn't look so pleased with yourself if I didn't."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're too smart for your own good?" The Doctor asked, staring at him, almost offended. Ianto's lips twisted into a smile.

"I'm well known just for that, really." When the Doctor gave him a look of pure disdain, Ianto gently pushed him back into their previous topic. "So, do I–?"

"Yes, yes, you survive!" The Doctor snapped. "Do you know that you're the weirdest thing that's happened to me today?"

"I have a feeling that you don't say that often."

"I don't say it at all, which says a lot about you." When Ianto responded with a pleased smirk, the Doctor gave him a stern look. "And I didn't mean it as a compliment."

"Doesn't mean you didn't just pick me up to save among all those creatures, though." Ianto recognised the blue box he'd been taught so well to recognise and pushed the door open carelessly. "You know, most people would say that you have a strange fixation on humans, given that–" His voice died as soon as he took in the room he'd just stepped into. "Shit. It's–"

"Sure is," the Doctor said, a faint trace of mockery in his voice, but Ianto ignored him.

"..._alive_," he continued, fascinated, as he trailed his fingers on one of the handrails by the door, feeling the pulse of life under his fingers; strong and steady.

"Well, that one's new," the Doctor muttered. "What date was it when you left?"

"20th October," Ianto replied, still distracted and reached up to touch what looked like a column that supported the impossibly large ceiling. The size itself wasn't that surprising – after all, a being that could travel in space in time couldn't use an actual phone box, right?

"I'd deeply appreciate it if you could not fondle my TARDIS, thank you," the Doctor said tersely and Ianto finally looked back at him.

"I'm also well-known at being good at fondling, if you're interested." Ianto certainly was. It had been awhile after that weird– thing he'd had with John from his department and despite the numerous rumours, he'd never actually slept with an alien.

The Doctor gave him a critical look. "Aren't you a bit too young for that?"

"I'm nineteen!" Ianto said, scandalised. "And you're–"

"Not at all that young," the Doctor replied, carefully sidestepping the question. "Humans!" he continued with a huff. "You're all incorrigible."

"Like I said," Ianto reminded, "you still let me come aboard your ship."

"Let that not be a euphemism or so help me," the Doctor snapped and Ianto gave him his filthiest grin, sitting down into a chair near the console. "Home, you said?"

"Sure."

"And you're not going to, I don't know," the Doctor seemed confused for a moment, "report me to your superiors?"

"Why the hell would I?"

The man shrugged. "Well, Jack did say you were a bit too much free will and too little common sense, but–"

"Who's Jack?"

"Never mind that now," the Doctor said hastily as he started pressing buttons and pulling levers. "Do you want to go home or not?"

Ianto fidgeted in his seat. "Well, now that you ask..."

**o.O.o**

"And you're sure that I have been missing for three hours?" Ianto asked for the hundredth time as he got out of the TARDIS and took a deep breath from the familiar and well-missed air of London.

"And not a second more," the Doctor nodded solemnly, then frowned. "Well, maybe a few seconds. Or a minute. Half an hour at most, really."

"Neat," Ianto had to admit. More than neat, really, given that he'd been on the TARDIS for nearly a month, but he wasn't about to stroke the Doctor's ego even more. "Well, duty calls. I've even got a cover story for Ivy. Hope she falls for it." The Doctor gave him a small smile that Ianto couldn't quite interpret and he smiled in response, pulling the Time Lord into a spontaneous hug before releasing him once again. "Well, see you around."

"You will," the Doctor said softly and Ianto bit back yet another question. The man had shown him so much – planets he'd never seen and creatures he would have never met otherwise and more wonders than, he supposed, anyone had seen in their life. The least he could give him was his right to keep his secrets. At least for now.

With a sigh, Ianto turned around and his eyes sought the familiar outlines of Canary Wharf's buildings in the night sky. He didn't have much time to contemplate his choices, really. He had a story to tell – and, to make matters even worse, one that involved drugs, alien slave dealers and fictional ship that had brought him back to Earth.

Business as usual, then.

**o.O.o**

"I didn't know you had a brown suit," Jack called out as he rummaged through Ianto's wardrobe. He'd been looking for socks, initially, and then it had transformed into fascination of the vast amounts of shirts in increasingly ridiculous – and yet fantastic-looking when they were on Ianto – colours.

Ianto's head appeared from the en suite bathroom; the lower part of his face covered in shaving foam and his expression confused. "That's probably because I don't have one."

"I beg to differ." Jack carefully pulled out a two-piece pinstriped suit and Ianto made a face. "Why have I never seen you wear it?"

"I don't like it," Ianto said, hastily hiding from view yet again. Jack scoffed.

"Why would you have a suit being tailored for you if you don't like it?" There was no response. "Would you wear it today?"

"Absolutely not." Ianto sounded adamant, but Jack pressed the matter further. There was something about the suit; something familiar, but not too recent.

"Why not?"

"It's not really my colour."

"When you're this pale, everything is your colour. Come on," he added as he fought with the hanger. "Live a little. Enough black and grey."

"It'll clash with my shirt and tie," came Ianto's faint protest from the bathroom and Jack frowned at the offending pieces of clothing his lover had carefully laid out on the bed to be worn. The shirt was a hot pink one and the tie had pink and grey stripes.

"Choose different ones, then. Just for today," Jack begged and then grinned when the water was turned off and Ianto returned to the bedroom with a long-suffering sigh.

"Fine." He put everything back in its place and got out a white shirt and a dark brown tie with small flowers drawn all over it. "Happy now?"

"Immensely."

"If you're going to dictate what I'm wearing, you can at last stop stealing my clothes," Ianto snapped irritably when Jack snuck out a black waistcoat. "Especially my waistcoats. All you ever do is stretch them and then give them back."

"It's just my manly physique," Jack noted and Ianto laughed sardonically.

"That's one way to put it."

"What's up with you today?" Jack asked curiously as he watched Ianto button up his suit jacket. The suit was a perfect fit, just like usual, and fit to Ianto's long, lean body like a glove. There was something in his posture – long legs slightly spread, hair mussed – that reminded him of something, but he couldn't quite place it.

"We're going to be late," Ianto said instead of an actual response and disappeared back into the bathroom.

Jack shook his head fondly and followed him to fix his own hair – he'd brought his own hair gel after the several times Ianto had snapped at him to stop wasting his and 'if you insist on sleeping here, Jack, you could at least try to not use all of my hair products', even though Jack was still using his shampoo. Apple scented or not, he was not going to bring anything else to contribute to the hair product nightmare that formed Ianto's sink. For someone who always insisted on not being the least bit vain, Ianto dedicated an incredulous amount of time to his hair.

"What is it?" The man in question asked now as Jack stared at him once again. Something looked different today. Ianto hadn't changed his haircut and he was doing his hair the way he usually did – flat at the sides, sort of spiky-but-flat on the top of the head and with the front of it pointing outwards, but there was something that looked slightly... off. "Have I got something on my face?"

"No, it's fine, just–" Ianto seemed alarmed and in dread of his response, so Jack decided to let him off the hook. "Never mind."

It was still there; that reminder of something he couldn't quite recall, but Jack decided to drop it, at least for now.

**o.O.o**

"Your suit is brown," was the first thing Ianto heard when Gwen arrived at work and he smiled, giving her the thumbs up.

"Nothing gets past you and Jack today, does it? This morning I got a, 'You've got a brown suit'."

Gwen didn't dignify that with a response. "It's just – I've never seen you in it before." She fingered his tie absently. "You remind me of someone."

"If you figure it out before Jack does, I will never let him hear the end of it," Ianto said gleefully. He'd been absolutely terrified when Jack had made him wear that thing a few hours ago, especially since he hardly remembered having it. And to make matters worse, there had been the hair thing. Ianto hadn't even realised that he'd been doing it; imitating the man he'd admired before the Tower had went down in flames while the Doctor had been there. Not that it had been his fault, really, and neither had been his fault that Jack had tried to run away with him. Emphasis on _tried_, because he and Gwen had teamed up to find what had happened and Ianto had brought all the knowledge he had of the Doctor on the table, so they both knew exactly what had happened.

Which, unfortunately, meant that Gwen could easily recognise just who he looked like as well.

Ianto took a deep breath, quietly vowed to burn the suit once he got home, and prepared for a long, long day.

**o.O.o**

"Tsk, tsk, Gwen Cooper." Gwen turned around in her chair when Jack's voice suddenly floated behind her. "And Ianto thinks I'm the one who needs to stop the harassment in the workplace."

"Oh, shut it, Harkness," she snapped, facing her computer again and pointedly did _not _look in the direction of the Autopsy Bay where Ianto had been dissecting an alien for the past half an hour, using the notes Owen had left on the species.

"He does look good in that suit, though, doesn't he?" Jack continued shamelessly, dragging his own chair from what had previously been Tosh's workstation. "I knew he would."

"I think it's just about any suit, really," Gwen admitted. "This one is interesting because it's new."

"It's not, that's just it," Jack said, lowering his voice and chancing a look in Ianto's direction in case he was listening. "It was just stuffed on the back of the wardrobe, just like everything else he brought from London. I don't see why he'd stop, though." His eyes rested on their colleague once again and suddenly, he froze.

"What is it?" Gwen asked, leaning in to look over his shoulder.

Jack's eyes were almost comically wide. "It's easier to see when he's with his back to me," he muttered and Gwen prodded, "What is?"

"Imagine him a bit shorter," Jack said, lowering his voice even more. "And with lighter hair. Sort of wilder, too; just sticking everywhere."

"Now that just looks wrong," Gwen said, but Jack clicked his tongue.

"No, it looks _familiar._ Think about it." Jack turned to her now, with a strangely conspirational gleam in his eyes. "He must have shown you something about his work back in London. Something very, very crucial to One?"

"Oh, Jesus." It really was easier to see it this way, Gwen thought. Ianto had shown her everything the database had on the Doctor and it included mostly accidentally taken photos, and now the resemblance was striking. "Why would he–"

"He didn't want to wear it; I made him," Jack said. "But at some point, he did it because he wanted to."

Gwen grimaced. "Leave him alone, okay? Don't go terrorising him about it."

"Wasn't even thinking of it," Jack said, voice dripping of indignation, and yet Gwen suspected that he'd do just that the moment he was out of her sight.

**o.O.o**

Ianto dropped his keys and wallet on his sofa as he entered his flat, Jack close behind him. Ever since he'd spent two millennia underground, Jack constantly followed him around like a stray puppy and Ianto wasn't sure if he was afraid that he'd lose him or that he himself would get lost. Whatever the reason, he was glad to be of help, even if the Captain constantly changed and moved everything in the flat.

"Wasn't really our best day," Jack muttered now as Ianto carelessly threw his coat over the hanger in the hallway.

"You could say that," he conceded with a sigh. It really hadn't been. Rift activity, several different kinds of aliens and the sort of major, world-invading species that usually showed up on every few months.

"You look tense," Jack noted, sneaking up behind him and wrapping his arms around his waist. Ianto gave a small, non-committal sound as a response. "Want a massage?"

"Would kill for one, thank you," Ianto admitted gratefully and quickly headed for the bedroom, taking off his suit jacket and tossing it on the half-open wardrobe door just as Jack started unbuttoning his shirt. "You're very good at this, you know," he added, his words halfway a moan of relief when his Captain's fingers started kneading over the tense spots where his shoulders met his neck. It hurt, but in a good way, and Ianto was just starting to relax when Jack's soft murmur came from behind him.

"We figured you out, you know," he said. "Me and Gwen."

"You did?" Ianto asked, trying not to tense.

"Mm."

"You've got me, then," he said, trying to turn into a joke the conversation he knew was coming. "I'm nothing more but a humanoid alien. It's a very slow invasion. Wanna take you to our leader?"

"You liked him, didn't you?" Jack asked, tone too soft when one considered that he was so blatantly ignoring Ianto's stalling. "Before Canary Wharf went down. You started working for Torchwood because you heard the stories, and they fascinated you."

"I was nineteen," Ianto said, voice a little harsher than he'd intended it to be. "I was easily impressed. I grew up."

"That's a pity," Jack said gently, "because you're twenty-four now."

"A lot of things can happen in five years."

"Yes, they can," Jack agreed. "Did you ever meet him? Before the battle?"

"Once," Ianto admitted. " I made a bit of a mess – well, 'a bit' meaning that I accidentally got myself kidnapped onto an alien spaceship and then was brought into the slave market – and he happened to be there. He brought me back home, just when I thought that I'd never see Earth again."

'And you didn't travel with him?" Jack sounded deeply sceptical and Ianto gave a small laugh at the right assumption.

"I did, for a month or so. Then I decided that if Yvonne spotted him somewhere around when I came back she'd take him as a captive and decided it was about time I went home."

"And you never told her anything about it."

"Of course not." He hadn't contemplated it even for a second, really, during that month, despite the fact that he'd sworn just like every other Torchwood employee to bring him into the Tower at the first sight of him.

Silence settled for a few minutes during which Jack worked wordlessly despite the curiosity Ianto could almost feel burning inside him, then he asked, "You know that it wasn't really his fault, don't you? The Daleks, the Cybermen?"

"That was all Yvonne," Ianto agreed, nodding. "Doesn't make it easier to accept, though. He was there. I used to associate him with hope and the best things in the entire Universe and in the end I was left with nothing more than dead bodies and dust."

"I know how you feel. No, really, I do," Jack added when Ianto scoffed in disbelief. "At least he doesn't think that you're not supposed to exist."

"I'm sorry," Ianto said immediately. He was still fuming about that, months later. Jack had told him just a few days after he'd came back what had happened and it was clear how much the Time Lord's words had hurt him.

"I got over it," Jack said with too much ease to be telling the truth. "But, you know, next time he comes around, you can go with him."

Ianto forgot everything about the message and turned around sharply. "What?"

"You know, see the Universe again. It would do you good to see that there's still something pure left out there, even after the death and the losses."

"I don't think I can, Captain," Ianto said bitterly. "Every person has a breaking point and I think I've reached mine. It's just been... too much."

"That's exactly the point," Jack said, voice almost urgent. "You should find a way to love the world again."

"I don't think he'd want me there anyway," Ianto added. There was a not so insignificant amount of guilt as well; that he felt that he could just dash off whenever the opportunity arose and yet had judged Jack for leaving his team in times of need. There was also a rather large amount of tactful pity over the fact that the Doctor would welcome him back and would probably never stand to have Jack around him in his immortal state. "I've got too much blood on my hands now."

"It's never too much to be cleaned," Jack said, wrapping his arms around Ianto and bringing him into a surprisingly strong chest-to-back hug and, for just a moment, Ianto wasn't sure which one of them he was trying to reassure. "And can you guess who taught me that?"


End file.
